Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday March 25, 2012 @09:58AM
from the he-loves-it dept.

techfun89 writes "Mars has returned to our evening skies as it does every two years. This time it is getting even more attention and buzz than it normally would. Amateur astronomer Wayne Jaeschke of West Chester Pennsylvania noticed an unusual protrusion in the planet's southern hemisphere, preceding the sunrise terminator. Several things may have contributed to this strange 'cloud formation.' One possibility is a meteoric impact event, where dust was spewed up into the atmosphere. Another could be a major dust storm, which are typical on Mars. Of course, it could be something more mundane; that these observations were caused by a mere optical illusion via a type of glint that occurred due to having just the right combination of lighting and atmospheric conditions. Some suggest volcanic activity, though this is unlikely given it has been 20 to 200 million years since lava has flowed on Mars."

The linked article is fairly contradictory on several points. The glaring one is this:

" It was first seen on the evening of March 20th. Jaeschke alerted the international Mars observing community about the odd "extension" at 190.5Â east, 43.7Â south, just before the area that rotates into daylight. The odd feature was visible in all color-filtered exposures from near-infrared to blue light. Jaeschke produced the animation below.

The feature was also reportedly captured by other amateur astronomers over the past few nights. Some astronomers in Europe have seen it as far back as March 12th."

So, it was NOT first seen on the 20th, but rather on the 12th in Europe, and the guy in West Chester is not the discoverer of it.

At midnight on the twelfth of August^h^h^h^h^h^h March, a huge mass of
luminous gas erupted from Mars and sped towards Earth.
Across two hundred million miles of void, invisibly hurtling
towards us, came the first of the missiles that were to
bring so much calamity to Earth.

At first I thought your post was just the standard./ guy being picky, but yeah totaly agree. To me, even worst than the dates, I don't see a single thing about this guy's equipment or methods, to me in a "tech" article that would almost be first thing.

From Jaeschke's website, it appears he is using a 14" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope along with an imaging system that includes a Point Grey Research Flea3 monochrome CCD camera with Astrodon and Astronomik Diochroic filters.

Maybe someone is testing nuclear warheads. If Bush/Cheney were still in power that would insure a massive increase in funding for the space program so we could invade Mars and topple their government. Its probably the only way we will ever colonize mars is if we fell an urgent need to occupy it.

Obama hasn't toppled a government over a fabricated claim they are making WMD's, yet. If he invades Iran then maybe you will have him. Though Iran seem to be actually developing nukes, and those are the countries we generall DON'T invade, reference North Korea and Pakistan.

Its not clear Obama has even toppled a government yet. Libya is the only one that is even close and that was more Italy, France and NATO leading that charge than the U.S. and that was for oil not WMD's. Libya completely abandoned WMD'

Once somethng new's been discovered, astronmers take another look at recent observations to see if they found it too. It's not at all uncommon to find images of it in photos taken before the official discovery. The discoverer isn't the first person to see it but the first person to recognize it as something new and report it.

Ditto wonkey_monkey's comment. Maybe Google realizes the same people who would buy into astrology would buy into psychic stuff and would also not discriminate either from astronomy. It's pretty cynical, but there's probably something to it.

So if we can see it from Earth, shouldn't you be able to see it from one of the various devices we have stationed on/around Mars? Can't we grab the camera and pan around to see if there are any towering pillars of smoke/dust/clouds hanging around?

To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any working probes on or around Mars at this time

Not even close. Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Mars Express are all still operating in orbit. The Opportunity rover is still functioning on the surface, but I suspect it's nowhere near the cloud.

To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any working probes on or around Mars at this time.

Then "the best of your knowledge" is pretty darned poor. It states right there in the article that you clearly didn't read that:

Hill and his team will be looking at the area of the formation using the Thermal Emission Imaging System or THEMIS, one of the instruments on the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter. THEMIS will also check out heightened cloud activity around Mars' shield volcanoes as well as around the southern site spotted by the amateurs.

There is no huge mass of luminous gas that has erupted from our world, and if there were, it would not be speeding towards the blue planet, across some REDACTED distance of void, invisibly (for REDACTED values of invisibility) hurtling towards it. And if perchance such a thing were to have happened, the cloud would not contain the REDAC

This news story would be much more exciting and interesting if it were the discovery of an ET martian base, possibly for scientific observation of the Earth. Otherwise, it seems to be rather mind numbingly boring.

When Mariner 9 (and 2 Soviet Mars orbiters) the planet was having the worst dust storm in decades. The entire surface was basically invisible from orbit, which hasn't happened since.

The reason I bring this is up is that this storm did not reach above the atmosphere. It was observed from Earth, but caused nothing like the pictures of the recent event - and that was more or less the biggest storm ever seen. So, if this is real, I don't think it's a dust storm.